Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—from publishing reports to academic announcements to literary dispatches—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today’s stories:
In honor of May being Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month, NBC News features twenty-six emerging voices from the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, including poets Craig Santos Perez, Mai Der Vang, and Ocean Vuong.
May is also Short Story Month, and Penguin Random House and Bullet Journal have teamed up to create a free guide about how to write a short story. The guide includes craft insight from several writers, including Nell Stevens, Josh Barkan, Lesley Nneka Arimah, and Charles Yu. (Signature Reads)
“With a memoir, you have a strong sense of the accumulation of time and its steady march. With poetry, no matter how long you might have been working on a piece, the feeling is one of suddenness, quicksilver, lightning.” Patricia Lockwood talks about writing poetry, what she’s working on now, and the process for writing her memoir, Priestdaddy, which comes out today from Riverhead Books. (Chicago Review of Books)
Poet Jack Mueller died last week at the age of seventy-four. A fixture of the San Francisco poetry scene, Mueller published six poetry collections and served as the chairman and executive director of the National Poetry Association in San Francisco. (San Francisco Chronicle)
At the Outline, Tolulope Edionwe considers the effect of the New York Times cutting ten categories from its best-sellers lists, including graphic novels and mass-market paperback fiction, earlier this year. Edionwe reports that many industry professionals believe the changes have led to both decreased sales in the cut categories in 2017 and the exclusion of emerging authors.
“Even if the thought of having to start from scratch and rewrite the novel felt impossible, I knew I would regret giving up more than having to plow through the work yet again.” Lisa Ko writes about the many times she rewrote and scrapped a manuscript before writing her debut novel, The Leavers, which was released today by Algonquin Books. (Literary Hub)
Science fiction and fantasy publisher Tor Books has launched Tor Labs, a new imprint of experimental genre writing. The imprint’s first title, Steal the Stars, is an audiodrama written by Mac Rogers that will be released in August in weekly episodes. (Publishers Weekly)
“Novels and poems are far more magical than any political purpose.” New Yorker editor David Remnick talks with the Nairobi-based journal, Enkare Review, about the state of literature in America, the New Yorker’s online strategy, and the importance of taking chances with a literary journal.
